


The Scarlet Island

by drladybird



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect - Various Authors, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alien Mythology/Religion, Awkwardness, F/F, Gen, Humor, Implied/Referenced Torture, In which Cora really is straight, Interspecies Awkwardness, Rated for violence and disturbing implications - the porn is minimal and fade-to-black, Serious Injuries, Unrequited Crush, Worldbuilding, Xenophilia, asari commandos kick lots of ass, canon-typical piracy, creative weaponry, cw offscreen child murder, hostile wildlife, incompatible sexual orientation, sympathetic batarians, trapped behind enemy lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 20:14:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18038192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drladybird/pseuds/drladybird
Summary: This was supposed to be a straightforward mission. Janae was supposed to be easing in the Daughters’ new alien recruit and testing out her skills.Now they’re trapped in hostile territory, with an angry batarian who may or may not be on their side. Sea monsters want to eat them. They may or may not be rescued any time soon. Good thing Cora’s so competent.Really, really attractively competent.What’s heterosexuality?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kahika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/gifts).



> -I'm prepared to take Initiation as canon for anything regarding Cora, except the implication that she's a natural blonde. She's clearly not a natural blonde in game.  
> -I can't remember if recreational narcotics were ever mentioned in the games, but I'm prepared to bet that wherever there's drug misuse by humans or critters with similar biochemistry, there's narcotic misuse.  
> -Janae's religious opinions are not meant to be objectively correct.

This could be an interesting mission.

The Rising Tide gang had been knocking around the Traverse for a few decades, running illicit drugs in various directions, smuggling forbidden art into the Batarian Hegemony and weapons out. The Hegemony didn't care, partly because Rising Tide was pretty minor, but mostly because the relevant officials loved forbidden art and foreign cheese and didn’t want to lose their supply. Silver Dawn had a running gang war with the Tide, started because the Tide was mostly batarian and Dawn were turian supremacists, but very few people cared about Silver Dawn either.

Except, suddenly, the Tide had found a new source of funding and a lot of half-refined opiates. They were recruiting cannon fodder by getting idiots addicted to opium and then controlling their supply, and sometimes it was idiots from unauthorised, non-Alliance human colonies. And they’d exterminated Silver Dawn - used the new cannon fodder to storm their headquarters. Half the higher-ups had surrendered, but nobody wants turian slaves (too hard to feed) so the Tide shot them anyway and took selfies with their body parts. A few bottom-tier Dawn thugs were still running round, making grandiose threats and failing to carry them out.

Then Rising Tide took over an unauthorised asari mining colony. They’d mostly offered the colonists jobs, and only shot a couple who fought back, but they’d helped themselves to a very nice aluminium mine and they clearly meant to move up in the world. And they’d started scouting round _authorised_ asari mining colonies.

Cue some quite worried Thessian generals. And that’s why Talein’s Daughters (plus alien exchange student) were aboard the stealth frigate _Sunshark,_ orbiting a nice-looking blue-and-occasionally-green unnamed planet two weeks’ FTL from the Shrike Abyssal relay.

 

.................................................

 

Danny Kuromatsu, recently ex-Tide, stood next to Nisira in front of the image projector. He was tall for a human, thickly muscled, and his coating of bad tattoos at least implied he could stand pain, but he was cringing like a little scuttling animal. Shaking pretty badly too, although that was probably withdrawal – he was drying himself out as fast as possible, which was faster than the medics recommended. His sister Laurette was in medbay, after trying to dry out _too_ fast and vomiting everywhere.

“Yeah,” Danny said. He fished a herbal cigarette out of his pocket, put it in his mouth, then put it back in his pocket. “That… that big tropical island there, Big Island we call it? They’ve covered pretty well the whole island in morra plants. Y’know, run a combine harvester through it when it sets seed, crush the seeds for oil then purify opium or heroin out of the oil. Four crops a year, with the climate. And the processing plant’s over _here_ on Little Island _._ ” He tugged at his long straggling beard. “No slaves, right? They left the Hegemony to get away from that shit, and they haven’t gone back on _that_ yet. Tide members run the plant, do the farming, with a lot of drone and VI help. Mostly the turians and quarians, cause opium’s the wrong way round for them to use themselves.”

“So,” Nisira said, zooming in on the islands, “we can knock out most of their opium supply by crop-dusting Big Island with herbicide and destroying the processing plant. Compound 09897’s STG-made. They _say_ it’ll make it impossible to grow morra plants or any other rhodophyte for a few years, and they say it won’t hurt the local chlorophyll-based ecology. Don’t know if I believe the second part, but we’ve got higher priorities.”

“I’m guessing that’s my job?” Janae asked. She might have been young, but she was their best pilot by far.

Nisira nodded. “You fly the crop-duster. Bit of an old model, but it handles well and it’s got more guns than the average crop-duster. Take Cora in case you need an extra pair of hands on the guns or the release mechanism.”

Lieutenant Cora Harper leapt to her feet and saluted crisply. Danny squinted at her.

Well, she stood out less than the krogan up the back. Jaarach Veer was, for obvious reasons, not a Huntress, but sometimes he got sick of fixing skycars and asked Nisira to hire him. He made up for being totally a-biotic by his ability to bench-press half a ton, having skin that could stop bullets, and being a damn good combat engineer. Better than Janae. To be fair, he’d had five hundred years more experience.

(Their other husband was back home with the skycars. Said he’d quit the Cabals due to “people shooting at me phobia”.)

“Now,” Nisira added, “slight problem. Big Island has automated AA guns here, here and _here,_ and we’ve done our best to replicate their IFF but I’m not certain it’ll fool the guns. Danny?”

Danny took a deep breath. “Taz is on it. She’s down there, and look, they don’t trust me and Rett so much after, after I didn’t like stuff, I got angry, but they still trust Taz. She’ll be able to disable the AA guns, put some shit in the other guys’ food that’ll knock them out, take one of the shuttles and get away with us. And you _know_ you can trust her, because you’ve got me and Rett for hostages.”

Nisira nodded. “That’d be Tazrakh ka Vao, mechanic, wields a pretty good assault rifle when necessary.” She flicked up several holograms showing a thickset middle-aged batarian with pale grey skin, shaggy grey fur, and a row of jewelled rings through her left jowl. Two of the holos had her posing in heavy armour. Most of the rest had her posing shirtless and showing off her impressive arm muscles. “ _Quite_ dissatisfied with the direction Rising Tide’s taken lately, and really wants political asylum in asari space.”

Danny cleared his throat. “And _definitely_ wants me and Rett alive, right. Like. We’re proper _ashra,_ us and Taz _.”_

That was the Hegemony’s word – an oath of sisterhood, between people too low-caste to be permitted formal vows.

Well, if Nisira trusted this Tazrakh, Janae was willing to trust Nisira.

Nisira nodded. “Safer to have her disable the guns than to send one of ours in. So I’d recommend approaching from the west…”

 

........................................

 

There was no sacrifice-worthy beer on the _Sunshark_. They had Eighth Cloud Red (bitter water) and they had Valenza’s weird home-brew.

“Sorry,” Janae said, pouring weird home-brew into the little bowls of her collapsible travel altar, “forgot to bring anything better. Now, my lord Kurinth, who is the steel edge and the calm of battle and the general’s cunning, make me yours. Make me as Talein, who remembered the greater good when she held the line. Kurinth lord of silence, make me silent, hide me as a _vahu_ in the jungle and give to me the _vahu’s_ venom.

Now my lord Janiri, who is the storm, make me yours for I am lightning given flesh. Set me to strike against my enemies, as Talein struck. Take away my fear and grant me rage, that I will never falter.”

She closed the bottle and knelt for a moment.

Looked like she had the easy job this time, but that was no reason to let her guard down. Not many Huntresses died of old age.

 _All my lords in the darkness,_ she added under her breath, _grant that I may live,_ _for my mother waits at home._

She rose.

Cora was standing behind her, looking uncertain. “Should I pray?” she said.

“Hmm,” Janae said, rising to her feet. “Do you have any gods? Or any other spirituality?” Janae was pretty sure religion was good for her, personally, but half the Daughters swore by atheism and self-reliance.

“Er. No. Never really tried religion, to be honest. So I suppose there’s not much point.” She smiled nervously. “Wait, am I in your way?”

“Nah,” Janae said. “We don’t need to gear up for half an hour yet, and I’ve checked everything’s clean. Your gear in order?”

Cora looked faintly offended by the question. “ _Any_ maiden who would be a matriarch checks her gear.”

Seriously. Who gave her that holy book, and did she _eat_ it? “Heh. You could pray to Serissa Theris. She count as your god? Miracle of really big bubble?”

Cora glared at her.

“I met old Rissa once,” Janae added. “She said rude things about my fashion sense.”

Cora raised her furry eyebrows. “She _did?”_

“In her defence, I was drunk and I tripped over my skirt and that yanked the neckline down and my tits fell out. Turns out those long swishy skirts work a lot better if you buy them ankle-length, even if that doesn’t look quite as elegant as having them down to the floor.”

Cora giggled. “Oh _dear_. See, that’s why I like pants.”

“Really?” Janae grinned. “Never seen you drunk!”

Cora shrugged. “Alcohol doesn’t work for me. I just get maudlin and hide in a corner. Besides, have you seen Alliance marines on shore leave?” She wrinkled her cute upturned nose. “Unedifying!”

Janae shrugged back. “Can’t be worse than maiden Huntresses on shore leave, can it?”

“In my experience, the Huntresses just dance badly, commit public indecency with each other or whoever else volunteers, possibly get arrested for… well, we had Cirine try biotic gliding off that skyscraper and break her ankle, and we had Per drawing azure bits on statues… Whereas the Marines start _punching_ people.” She looked revolted. “Usually the Navy. Sometimes the Hierarchy Navy if they’re feeling claw-proof. If there’s one thing more embarrassing than watching your squadmate try to re-enact Relay 314 on some innocent drive techs who just wanted a… actually I have no clue what they were high on, they were eating purple beetles… it’s needing your CO to bail you out of a _Hierarchy_ drunk tank. _”_

“Ooh, yeah,” Janae agreed. She’d been arrested by turian military police a few years ago, after climbing some buildings that apparently weren’t for climbing. “Those eyes, eh? Racial bonus to disapproving glare!”

Cora actually smiled. “We got the “I thought your species was better behaved, I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed in you” speech from three different cops and the drive techs’ CO. Then we got the “I thought our species was better behaved, I’m very angry” speech from our CO.”

Janae nodded. “See, that’s why we run the galaxy. Because we stick to punching the enemy.”

Cora shook her head. “I’m half inclined to agree. Wait. Is that a statue of Janiri?”

Oh, not this conversation _again._ Janae stood up straighter. “You know how siarist sages keep telling aliens that worship of the old gods is dying out? They’re talking rubbish. Organised Athamism and its money-sink giant temples and rigid hierarchies is dying out. Those of us who like our religious leaders first among equals, and Athame as first among equals, and put the temple in someone’s spare room and save the money for charity? We’ve been a minority religion for four thousand years, but we’re not going _anywhere_.”

Cora took a step back. “Er… sorry…”

Maybe that was a bit harsh. Can’t blame an alien raised in a tube for ignorance. “Not your fault, but just keep in mind? When you come across one of the old gods being described like they’re made of greeting cards and candy, _that’s the Siarist version_ for people who don’t believe in gods _._ Someone with the power to snap the winter’s spine and call up the crops from the underworld, she’s more than just a porn star made of blossoms. Like how I’m more than just a nice pair of tits.”

Cora’s eyes flicked downwards for a moment.

“I… think I see,” she said. “If I say anything else stupid, please correct me. Is that why you’ve got those tattoos?”

She leaned in to inspect the stylised sun-discs on Janae’s cheeks and forehead, close enough that Janae could feel her warmth and count the freckles across her nose. She was wearing thick black eyeliner again, freshly applied like a pre-battle ritual.

“Not really,” Janae told her from a few inches away. “Those are mostly for fun.”

Cora seemed to be admiring the (slightly faded) fine detail. Or, hopefully, she was using that as an excuse to stay in Janae’s personal space. She smelled surprisingly good – dense alien musk, sure, but warm and spicy and rich.

They’d shared a bed a few times – like a lot of stealth frigates, the _Sunshark_ was short on sleeping space. Now if _bed sharing,_ or _accidentally waking up snuggling,_ meant anything, then Janae was married to the whole crew and Jaarach Veer. Still, if you were already having ideas, spending the night in the same bed… gave you more ideas.

Cora looked weirdly narrow and gaunt at first glance, bones jutting out of places that should be smooth, wiry muscle showing through her skin like a salarian, but she was soft enough when you had your arms around her.

Her short brown fur was less silk and more bristle than Janae had hoped, but abrasive bristle… had definite possibilities.

Janae would have said she wasn’t attracted to aliens. Not even drell – pretty eyes and vivid colours, sure, and some of them had those beautiful phallic organs like wriggly flowers, but all sexes had far too much exposed muscle and any padding they had was in the wrong places and there was a _total_ lack of anything resembling breasts.

The new guys from Earth, though? How’s _that_ for a case of convergent evolution – it took about an hour to stop going “eek they’re missing chunks of their head!” and after that they looked like normal regular people, at least until you had to clean soggy fur out of the shower drain. And _most of the females were asari-shaped enough to be kind of exotically hot._ Cora, OK, she was scrawny, not much muscle, hardly any fat, but you could also use words like “delicately pretty” or “spun glass”…

Cora stepped back and nodded. “Makes sense. I suppose I’d better gear up.”

Had to be annoying for her, needing babysitting by a kid. Hadn’t she been practically a superhero by human standards? Well, if she was upset about the demotion, she wasn’t showing it.

“I like your eyeliner,” Janae blurted, apropos of precisely nothing. “Hey, you know, if you’re going to wear the same eyeliner all the time, you could get it tattooed on? So you wouldn’t have to keep applying it?”

Cora blinked. “Humans don’t normally do that.”

“Why not?”

“Although, you know… that’s not a bad idea. Very practical suggestion. I might think about it.” She nodded and strode out.

See? Surprisingly good conversationalist, once you got her to stop quoting ancient sages.

Nice ass, too.

 

.................................................

 

This wasn’t the time to plan how to get to know Cora better, or plan how to “get to know Cora better”, or to picture Cora naked (she had fur _there_ too – did she like having it stroked?) Plenty of time for that after the mission. She’d need to do it in the most proper manner possible, too, because she wasn’t sure how humans handled these things, and what if she accidentally pressured Cora into something she didn’t want? Or did something incredibly offensive and caused a diplomatic incident?

Last time she’d been serious about impressing someone, she’d borrowed her great-grandmother’s holiday house and fishing licence. Taken Valinn swimming round the rocks where the water was bracingly cold and the minnows zoomed around like shards of mirror, and they’d wrestled and shoved each other underwater in the sunlight. She kept winning the wrestling matches because Valinn was A, a civilian who didn’t work out much, and B, ticklish.

They’d picked their own dinner off the submerged cliffs – big fat juicy limpets mostly, and a flickbug that turned out to be full of roe, and Janae tried to grab a green clingfish but it chucked a nova at her and bruised her ribs. Janae spent a while declaring that she’d been Honourably Slain and acting out death scenes from epic poetry, while Valinn mocked her taste in epic poetry (like you can talk, Linn, I’ve seen your action vid collection…) and “resurrected” her with kisses.

She’d had to remind Valinn that food, please, I’m hungry? They dug out the frying pans and fed each other limpets fried in herb butter and raw flickbug roe. Valinn tried to look seductive by licking a raw oyster. It wasn’t very arousing – more of a _blep –_ but it was hilarious. She still had the pictures.

She still had the metaphorical oyster pictures too.

…The next time she came back from a mission, Valinn was madly in love with a co-worker who didn’t want to share her. That was why Janae no longer dated eighty-year-olds.

Anyway, you couldn’t do that with a human. They couldn’t hold their breath for more than a minute, or cope with the cold water and sharp rocks without protective gear, and the pale ones burned in bright sunlight like they’d been left outdoors on Palaven.

And you certainly couldn’t swim in the ocean anywhere near Big Island. Opium farmers aside, the sea was full of something Danny called _yowlers –_ a couple of tons of muscle and fangs, gleefully predatory, unnervingly intelligent, and amphibious enough that it was safer to stay off the beach.

Human females like chocolate, right? And shiny things?

Janae’s subconscious helpfully provided a mental image of Cora naked and smiling, spread out on a bed and draped with sparkling crystals…

Janae shook her head and went to gear up.


	2. Chapter 2

So.

No communication between the crop-duster team and the rest of the Daughters, barring emergencies.

Jaarach Veer and Tethys should have started their diversion on Little Island half an hour ago.

The other teams should have blasted their way through the back of the processing plant not long afterwards. They’d _almost_ certainly been noticed by now. That gave Rising Tide plenty of time to concentrate their attention on the Little Island processing plant. The Big Islanders were hopefully unconscious by now, and leadership had probably noticed, but that’d be a secondary concern compared to Veer’s pyrotechnics.

 _So._ “Dropping, Cora, stand by the release!”

Janae dropped the shuttle out of cloud cover and plummeted to skim low over the waves. _Just_ enough strain on the inertial compensators to slam her against the harness. The rocky south-west coast of Big Island loomed ahead and she tilted the shuttle up, just high enough to clear buildings.

The whole island was deep red, covered by neat rows of scarlet grass and huge black boulders. AA guns are _that_ way but they’re silent and unmoving, and there goes the herbicide, hissing out the back of the shuttle in a white cloud. One native green-leafed tree up ahead and then behind them, a great twisted thing that must have been too hard to cut down, with the red grass round its roots. _Here’s hoping you survive this, tree, and get your island back!_ One yellow-and-black VI cart trundling back and forth like a fat beetle, but no alarms and nobody to look up at them. Then they were off the sandy east coast and over the waves again.

It should take five passes to cover the whole island in Compound 09897, south to north. Living quarters are up the north end, on the hilltop where they won’t flood in the monsoon season and where the yowlers definitely can’t climb, next to the shuttleport and the other AA guns. Could easily be a few Tide members up that way, could be armed with shoulder-mounted missiles or worse.

“Turning,” Janae barked, and swung the shuttle round in a sharp arc. Back over the red island spraying poison, jink upwards to clear a boulder, and over the waves again.

Third pass, a figure on a hoverbike froze and stared up at them. Quarian – Janae saw the glass mask flash.

The shuttle’s laser sliced the quarian and their bike in half and blasted a long trench in the earth. Bike kept hovering in place. Top half of the quarian fell to earth, and then they were out of sight.

“Could’ve raised the alarm,” Cora gasped. “Seemed best.”

Poor bastard. _May she rise to glory._

No one else in sight. Fourth pass was straightforward.

Fifth pass, they came in low enough that they had to swerve round the base of the inhabited hill – it stood out, unploughed and covered with dry yellow native grass. No fortifications on the hill, just a bunch of cheap prefabs and a long motionless AA gun.

One turian lying motionless in the grass, wrapped in a blue blanket. No other gang members in sight.

No shuttles – must have taken all the shuttles to defend Little Island.

_The AA gun twitched._

Janae chucked the shuttle into a spiralling evasive manoeuvre. The restraints bit into her shoulders hard enough to bruise. Cora yelped.

“Taking fire taking fire!” Janae yelled, as the long gun snapped up and spat out a finned missile.

 _It’s heat seeking._ Janae slammed her fist down on the flare release button, dumped all the emergency flares out the back in a great blaze of light and heat, and spiralled left _fuck, these restraints need more padding_ and flung the shuttle straight up.

Cora fired the shuttle’s laser in the general direction of the AA gun, burning chunks out of buildings but missing the gun.

The missile veered off after the flares and _pull up up up and eastward, get out of the blast radius,_ slam on the emergency thrusters _get east and we’ll have to ride the blast –_

Missile hit the flares surprisingly quietly. Just a great _whump_ and the world went black for a second _,_ whirling and spiralling and she couldn’t pull up, couldn’t straighten the shuttle, hot air blasting in through a gaping hole in the side of the shuttle, and there went the rest of the herbicide spraying out in a white cloud, covering as much as possible –

“Eject!” Janae commanded, and punched the eject button. _What happened to Tazrakh, did she decide to sell out Danny after all? Poor kid was so sure she was on his side._ The shuttle roof blew open and spiralled away and she was falling. Parachute snapped open and she was stable and she was drifting slowly down towards the black sand beach. Still felt like she was spinning, but definitely stable.

Cora had cleared the tumbling wreckage and her parachute was open. Both of them had working shields and working pistols. Janae had a nice selection of grenades and her mini-flamethrower and omni-tool, and Cora _was_ a weapon. No hostiles visible. The odds could be a lot worse.

The shuttle splashed into the ocean and sank.

Janae braced herself for landing and _shit, which way is up?_ She thudded into the sand feet-first and stayed upright, but only by using biotics for support. The parachute crumpled on top of her, enveloping and blinding her, and she started to panic before she managed to levitate it off.

Hot hot air through her helmet filters, smelling of new growth and dry sweet grass and a fishy reek that must have been fertiliser.

She switched to air recirculation. Safer not to breathe the herbicide – Special Tasks swore it wouldn’t hurt anything that didn’t photosynthesize, but no point taking chances. The dizziness was fading, at least.

Cora landed neatly on her feet, slipped out of the parachute harness, and turned to Janae for orders.

“You injured?” Janae said. “Think I’m in one piece. We should hide, assault team’ll have to pick us up -”

The air prickled as Cora raised a bubble-shaped shield. Janae added her strength before she thought to wonder why.

Something enormous exploded out of the sea and slammed into their shield mouth-first, teeth everywhere like white knives. Their bubble bounced off the snapping teeth and skittered away over the sand and _keep your balance keep the shield –_

They came to rest upright and with their bubble intact, with the monster slid to a halt several metres away. It was plump and wide-mouthed like a truck-sized toad, smooth mud-coloured skin, long barbels hanging from its jaw. _Yowler. They warned us._

Cora threw a quick shockwave, which knocked it back about a foot.

The beast blinked its huge eyes. Tilted its head like a pet looking at a puzzle feeder.

It dug its four stubby flippers into the sand and started to heave itself closer.

Janae shot it in the face with her flamethrower. Flesh sizzled and the beast screamed, a terrible ear-bursting shriek. It spun itself round and thrashed back to the sea –

And there was an answering chorus of ungodly howling as many, many round toothy heads broke the surface and rushed towards the beach –

“Shield behind us and _run!”_ Janae shrieked and made for high ground, off the black sand onto firm soil and into the red grass rows. Cora was keeping up, although their shield was flickering badly. There were no trees or rocks to climb. The howling hadn’t stopped but it didn’t sound any closer. Yowlers didn’t like to come inland, Danny had said, but he’d also told stories about people who slept out in the fields and were taken. As clumsy as the things looked on land, they moved fast when they wanted to.

The red grass was over their heads and hid the beach completely, but there was no sound of pursuit, and yowlers on land were _not_ stealthy. Janae signalled a halt and sent up her drone, with its camera synced to her helmet display.

“No pursuit,” she gasped. “They’re all in the water.”

They were crowding round the injured one – looked like they were trying to comfort it.

Janae refused to feel guilty about a sea monster. If it died, it was its own fault for nearly eating her.

Cora took a deep breath. “Right. Wow. That was a _lot_ of teeth.” She dropped the shield. “Not injured. Hide in the long grass?”

“Looks like our best option. Don’t know what Tazrakh’s playing at. Hope she’s drugged someone!”

“The Tide look distracted, anyway.” Cora switched her armour colour from default black to blotchy red camouflage. “Well. Not like we could steal a shuttle, even if they’d left us one.”

Not from the middle of the gang base, anyway. “Should get further from the crash site – they’ll start looking there.” She sent the drone on a quick recon flight. No hostiles visible within a kilometre or so.

Better update the assault team now – Janae really hoped the comms were secure. She flicked her helmet comms back on and _oh shit._

“Cora?” she said. “Comms aren’t picking up. Not even if I route them through the drone.”

No one was coming for them.

Through the clear helmet, she saw Cora’s eyes widen.

Cora had taken the same oaths as the rest of them. _I am a daughter of Talein: and if ever I stand where she stood, I shall not flee, but I shall die as she died._ It was hard on her, though, to die in someone else’s little war.

Janae’s little sisters always cried when she left for a mission.

Well. They weren’t dead yet. Things could be a lot worse.  For example, there were _no_ krogan on the enemy side.

“ _Options,”_ Cora said, and there was a growl to her voice that Janae hadn’t heard before. “Build a boat – no, out of what? Wait till they realise we’re missing. Or there’s one comms antenna on this island, in the middle of the gang base."

How long would it take the assault team to realise the shuttle was down, and how long would it take Rising Tide to scour the island for them? “Gang base looked fairly empty. And we saw someone passed out in the grass, so I’m assuming Tazrakh did _something_ to the food. I’m prepared to try to get to the antenna, if you are?”

 _All my lords in the darkness, grant that I may live, for my mother waits at home._ There’d be memorial services for days…

Cora nodded. “They’re pirates, not soldiers. We’ve got a drone to scout ahead. There’s no caves on Big Island, no defensible structures, nowhere to hide. And we’ve only got a day’s food and water. Sounds safest to head into the base as quietly as possible, see if we can connect to the antenna and call for help, then retreat to the most defensible structure.”

_Me and my drone and an untested, primary-school-aged alien._

_Well. Semi-tested. Sensible in a crisis. Very helpful against sea monsters._

Their eyes met. _We take the best chance._

Janae nodded. “We’ll need backup plans. Distractions. I’ve got some flashbang and smoke grenades…”

Cora patted her omnitool. “I _think_ I managed to record those things screaming. Let me check…” She flicked through the display.

Very soft howling came from her wrist.

Janae blinked. “Playing _that_ at full volume should make for a good distraction. Danny and Laurette seemed terrified of yowlers. Even more terrified than the things deserve.”

Through the helmet, she saw Cora smile.

 

......................................................

 

It was unnerving, walking between the neat rows of long grass. Janae couldn’t see more than a few metres away. Even the sky was half-hidden by long bladed leaves. The world shrunk to just the two of them, surrounded by… well, really the red grass was the enemy. Good thing it couldn’t fight back.

No one and nothing attacked them, and there was no sound of trucks or hoverbikes.

There were no animals in the red grass. A place like this should have buzzing insects, spiderwebs, little round leaping birds, something burrowing underneath the bushes. Something should be whistling or croaking or beeping. Made Janae feel like the grass had _eaten_ all the wildlife.

The red grass ended at the foot of the inhabited hill, and they crouched near the end of their cover to switch their armour camouflage. There was no movement, only a few green shrubs and a battered shed ten metres uphill.

“Life signs in the shed,” Janae told Cora. “One biped, not moving. Over a hundred kilograms. Probably not turian or salarian. Probably got a comm that actually connects to the antenna, so if we can take it…”

Cora nodded, drew her pistol, and called up a barrier round them.

The front door looked like it had been broken for a while. Judging by the dents, Rising Tide had been propping it shut with a rock.

Someone had recently welded several large deadbolts onto the door and bolted it shut from the outside. Either something _interesting_ was going on, or Rising Tide had a big problem with runaway fertiliser.

Well, whatever happened, it was unlikely to make enough noise to be heard further uphill…

Janae yanked the bolts back biotically, flung the door open, and lit up the dark shed with her drone.

Someone on a chair. Tazrakh. That was Tazrakh ka Vao glaring at them. She’d been stripped naked and cuffed to a chair, hands behind her back, thighs and ankles cuffed to the chair legs, and she’d been fighting the ankle cuffs long and hard enough that they’d ripped her skin. There was dried blood caked on her face and blood dried and clotted black in her chest fur. Her left jowl was in rags where they’d ripped out all the piercings and her left lower eye was swollen shut and…

Oh. They’d cut out one of her eyes.

They’d meant to keep her out of the afterlife, trap her soul in her rotting body when she died.

“You the Huntresses?” she growled. “Thank fuck you’re alive. What’s your plan for getting out of here?”

“What happened?” Cora snapped.

“What do you think happened? They caught me messing with the northern gun and they figured they’d sell me back to Khar’Shan rather than kill me. I poisoned the food but I have no clue whether they ate it. Yes, I still want the Tide taken down, yes, I still want my _ashra_ alive, and no, I did not get one of my eyes cut out for the sake of deep cover, I know you’ve heard about me, do I sound like a good enough liar for any kind of infiltration mission? Now can you please untie me?”

Someone had disabled the southern gun. Someone had poisoned at least one gang member. The intel on Tazrakh was fragmentary, but didn’t make her sound like a qualified spy. And they could _really_ use someone who knew her way round the gang base.

Janae stayed in the long grass, and the biotic barrier stayed up, but she sent the drone to slice through the restraints with its little laser.

Tazrakh stood up gingerly. She looked stiff, but she didn’t move like she was in pain – which was impressive, because there was no skin left on her wrists or ankles at all, and Janae was pretty sure she could see tendons.

No hostile activity in the area. Janae jogged the few metres uphill and handed Tazrakh the medigel.

Janae was used to being tall, but Tazrakh was easily a head taller and about twice the width – shaggy fur over fat over dense, solid muscle. Looked like she could kill someone with one punch. Probably had, at some point.

She slathered the medigel on herself, and didn’t wince while it hardened into a clear protective layer.

“You fit to fight?” Janae asked her. That eye was, well, she was trying not to look, and there was definitely wrist tendon on show. She dug out some bandages to go over the medigel, for a bit more protection.

“Looks like I’ll have to be. Lived through worse. Don’t suppose you’ve got any pants?”

“Only the ones we’re wearing, I’m afraid,” Cora said, “and I doubt they’d fit you.”

Tazrakh sighed.

Not like they could see much through the fur, anyway.

“ _Right,”_ Tazrakh growled. Her deep voice was raspier than it should have been. “What exactly is going on here? Did they shoot you down? You Alliance or Huntress or what exactly? And I’ll take your orders – what’s our next step?”

The next step was going to be searching the shed for comms equipment. It didn’t look promising. It was full of fertiliser. You could make a great improvised bomb out of fertiliser if you had time, but they weren’t very portable.

Step after that: find that turian who’d passed out near the foot of the hill, and see if _he_ had a commlink.

Janae handed Tazrakh her pistol.

 

......................................................

 

The turian was where they’d last seen him, still wrapped in his long frilly blue cloak and curled into a peaceful-looking ball.

Was he breathing?

She sent her drone scouting. No cardiac activity. Rigor mortis developing.

“He _dead?”_ Tazrakh said. “Not what I was aiming for, but…” her lips peeled back from jagged teeth, “ _no_ one’s going to miss Serra.”

Cora stared at her.

“Trust me on that, Huntress, and no, you don’t want the details.”

And of course Serra didn’t have an omnitool or any sort of comm device. No, that would have been too easy.

He had a… wow, that was so modded that Janae wasn’t sure what it had originally been… shotgun-like object, and a portable shield generator, and that fancy cloak, which he’d managed not to shit on when he died. Tazrakh tore a few strips off the cloak and turned them into a rough belt, to which she clipped the shield generator and the holstered shotgun. As an afterthought, she tore off a two-foot-wide strip of cloak and wrapped it round her hips as an approximate kilt.

She’d wrapped her feet in bandages, as the closest thing available to shoes. Good thing her feet were so calloused.

“You… knew him?” Cora asked.

Tazrakh turned to stare down at her. “Listen. You’ve got good reasons for not trusting me, but if I was going to change my mind? I’d’ve done it earlier. You think I’ve lived this long, stayed free this long, by flip-flopping on decisions like this? I’ve got no one left in the Tide I care about, other than Rett and Danny. Shit-eaters in charge got the rest of my oath-kin killed. Sent ‘em in like they were no more than drones and didn’t mourn any more than you mourn for a drone. There’s people left who I’d _prefer_ alive, but if your lot wipe out the rest of the Tide?” She crossed her arms, carefully. “I won’t cry too hard.”

Cora squared her narrow shoulders, head tilted well back to meet Tazrakh’s gaze. “Sent them in against Silver Dawn?”

“Yeah. Our _fearless leaders_ ordered a _frontal assault_ on a fortified building. Half of Dawn was chucked out of the Hierarchy after they’d finished military service, and they trained the other half. In hindsight, we should’ve turned round and shot the varrenfuckers giving those orders.” She straightened herself up. “Spent enough of my life as a _thing_ for people’s use _._ Don’t plan to be a disposable thing again. And Rett and Danny belonged down a mine with their dad – no one respected them there, sure, Daddy least of all, but they weren’t _things_ and someone would’ve cried if they died. You get the idea?”

Cora nodded. “I get the idea.”

 

.............................................

 

They went up the hill on all fours, trying to hide behind bushes and long grass.

There _were_ insects in the native grass – great spiky neon-pink things that hissed and spread their purple wings instead of backing away. Yes, Tazrakh said, they had a venomous bite and if you licked one you’d probably die.

“Could be useful,” Cora said. She levitated several angry thrashing insects into the empty medkit and duct-taped it firmly shut.

The dead man’s shield generator was not a tactical cloak, not by any stretch of the imagination, but with a bit of creative reprogramming it covered Tazrakh’s grey fur and blue kilt in splotchy brown holographic camouflage.

Tazrakh had never exactly been a stealth expert. She was a mechanic, she pointed out, not a soldier. And she was a long way from her best. The bandages round her ankles were filthy, dirt and dust probably ground into the wounds, and blood was starting to seep through. It wouldn’t be hard for the Tide to spot her.

Still, Janae didn’t plan on leaving her behind.

The comms antenna stood maybe five hundred metres behind the prefabs, next to a sturdy-looking prefab shed. It was a standard Hegemony model – about ten metres of black metal, with a branched grille at the top. Flip back the protective plates round the base and there’d be interface sockets.

The processing plant staff slept on Big Island to keep them away from the processed opium, so there were a lot of prefabs. By Tazrakh’s count, there were 133 people living on-planet full-time, all with guns and some idea how to fire them.

None of them were visible right now. But there was a lot of wide open ground around that antenna, and only a shed to hide in.

“ _My_ shed, right? _”_ Tazrakh muttered. “Solid walls and the door locks properly. They’d need a plasma cutter to break in and all the plasma cutters should be in the shed. There’ll be spare weapons and food, if no one’s stolen them. Dev might be asleep in there again, or Kaya or Mahru tinkering with something, but any of them are pretty easy to throw out, or kill if we have to.”

She was used to the island heat, but she was still panting like an over-exercised varren. Janae was pretty sure her tongue was supposed to be darker pink than that – how much blood had she lost when they tore up her face?

“Right,” Janae said. “We walk to the shed as quietly as possible, only start running if we’re spotted. If there’s any hostile activity, we lock ourselves in the shed and I’ll use my drone to interface with the comm tower. If it’s destroyed, I can flash-forge another one in five minutes.”

Cora saluted.

Tazrakh nodded. “Got it.”


	3. Chapter 3

Move quietly. Move purposefully. Try to look like you belong, so that if someone does glance at you, they’ll assume you’re a comrade.

Is everyone unconscious? Are they all dead?

Janae could have sworn she was being watched.

They were a few hundred metres from the antenna and the shed when the sirens started.

The three of them sprinted for the shed as about twenty armed pirates piled round the corner of the prefabs. Janae chucked a grenade and a flashbang in the pirates’ general direction and kept running.

Over the sirens, there was an appalling shrill howling.

The pirates froze for a few seconds, staring around for yowlers climbing the hill to eat them. Janae and Tazrakh made it nearly to the shed before the shooting started.

Cora turned and threw several pirates backwards, before calling up a hemispherical barrier that flickered ominously under a hail of bullets.

Tech shields practically out. Cora as rearguard, holding the shield. Janae yanked open the shed door and turned back and –

Something slammed into her thigh –

Why was she kneeling –

Tazrakh picked her up by the armpits and almost threw her into the shed. Dark inside.

Cora charged. Janae didn’t know Cora could charge, but one second she was running and the next second she was next to them in the shed, crackling blue and fighting for breath, and Tazrakh was frantically locking the door and the lights came on and…

Ah. That’s a rather worrying amount of purple. Where’s the medkit?

Cora had the medkit – the actual medkit, not the one with the toxic insects. She was ripping the ceramic plating off Janae’s leg and slicing through the undersuit, and oh dear, that looks like quite a significant hole through my leg and I probably should be more concerned about this.

Emergency tourniquet was much more painful than being shot, but it stopped the bleeding long enough for Cora to fill the hole with medigel.

“Ow,” Janae said. “Do we have any opium?”

Cora smiled at her, and, look, it was a bit hard to make out her face behind the helmet, but she seemed to be crying.

Quite a lot of people were banging on the door.

Oh yeah. They were supposed to be calling for help.

Ooh, and a lucky break for a change: the drone was still hovering outside, and none of the pirates had thought to wreck it.

Janae synced her helmet camera back to the drone. “Twelve quarians, mostly un-armoured,” she said. “Three batarians in light armour, one of them looking a bit out of it, and one batarian in track pants. One human and one turian, but they’re having trouble staying on their feet. All of them panicking and swearing rather than doing anything logical.”

The little floating ball drifted sweetly over the scrum of bodies and plugged itself into the comms antenna.

Wow, her leg really hurt now.

Ow _fuck._ That had to be Cora undoing the tourniquet – her entire leg prickled violently and felt like it was shifting in and out of existence.

Just insinuate the program into the Hegemony-standard software… yeah, not a very impressive firewall there… and use their comms network…

Her commlink crackled to life.

“Talein’s Daughters!” she told it. “This is the crop-duster team! We’ve been shot down, we’re under attack and we need urgent extraction. Coordinates are here –” she sent through the coordinates. Probably broadcasting their location to half of Rising Tide, but they seemed unlikely to have reinforcements nearby.

She’d never been so glad to hear Nisira’s voice. “Under attack by what force?”

She let Cora explain the situation. At least her leg was starting to feel more like it existed.

ETA 20 minutes? That sounded workable. She was pretty sure she wasn’t dying. The rest of her blood seemed to be staying on the inside. She could really use some painkillers, though.

“No, seriously,” she told Cora. “What pain relief do we have in that kit?”

Cora injected something into her arm. Definite improvement.

Rising Tide were still banging on the door.

_Now, can I overload armour through the wall if I use the drone’s camera to aim?_

Took a long time – the wall attenuated the pulses pretty badly – but after several seconds, one of the armoured batarians went stiff and fell over. Track Pants Guy rushed to their aid, failed to get the armour working, and started trying to manually lever it off.

A quarian in her undersuit shot the wall with an assault rifle. Made an appalling noise but not much of a dent. Sadly, the rifle didn’t have enough programming to overload.

“Not sure what they’re trying to accomplish there,” Tazrakh said. She was slumped behind a workbench swigging an energy drink. “Long as they don’t have any decent metal-cutting equipment, we’re all right. And _most_ of the metal-cutting equipment’s in here with us. Backup plan, though – what explosives do you have?”

“We have… Cora, where did you put my grenade pouch?” Looked like she’d flung it somewhere during armour removal.

“Er,” Cora said. “Let me find it…”

It was sitting on top of some sort of knife-covered agricultural tool. Tazrakh glanced into it and looked unimpressed. “Either of you two know how to turn batteries into bombs?”

“Think so,” Cora said. “I may need a little guidance.”

“Wait,” Janae said. “I’m trying to overload their armour. Tazrakh, our armour _should_ be overload-proof, but we’re fighting quarians, so just in case, the external emergency manual release is at the back of the neck.” Tazrakh nodded.

The other two batarians went down eventually, and one of them was promptly trampled. The four armoured quarians, though? _Whatever_ they’d done to their armour programming, trying to hack it was like trying to scratch through marble with her fingernails. The best she could do was to set off a suit breach alarm on the male in green.

He jerked, clutched at his chest, and sprinted back to the prefab barracks. _Wow,_ quarians move fast when you give them a good reason.

No, the other quarians had their alarm programming better secured. No, there was no way to set off a feedback loop on their helmet audio or mess with their external sensation programs. She managed to set Undersuit Girl’s mask to completely transparent. That slowed her down - delicate nocturnal eyes just weren’t up to this level of sunlight.

Not much more Janae could do, through the wall. She brought her attention back to the shed.

Cora and Tazrakh were at the workbench, ripping batteries out of unidentifiable farm implements.

Tazrakh was soaking wet, fur and improvised kilt plastered flat against her body and bloodstains trickling down her legs. She must have poured water over herself to cool down.

It was far too hot in the shed. Janae’s armour cooling wasn’t doing much, now that she was unarmoured below the waist.

Janae experimentally levered herself into a sitting position. It hurt, but her head didn’t spin too badly. “Hand me the equipment,” she said, “and I’ll make us a few more grenades. Tazrakh? If they do break through, are you able to fight them?”

Tazrakh curled her hand around her turian shotgun. Stared at Janae with three good eyes and a mess of blood clots. “I’ll do what needs doing. If it gets hard? I’ll remember that those guys could have killed me for betraying them. But no, they decided they’d _return me to the Hegemony._ And they laughed. Said they’d _send me home._ ”

Right.

Janae tried to imagine fighting the Daughters, and quickly stopped imagining that because it really wasn’t helpful.

“Not to mention,” Tazrakh added, and paused to rewire something with sharp-nosed pliers. Her wrist bandages still looked intact. “Silver Dawn needed shooting. No regrets there. But their kids didn’t.”

“Their _kids_?” Cora yelped.

“Yeah. They really meant their one-big-family propaganda. Had all the kids who were too young to fight looked after at headquarters. Not quite sure what we should have done with them, but shooting them and dumping them in the pit with their parents? Probably _not that.”_

Cora’s lip curled. “ _That_ didn’t make it into the selfies!”

“Nah,” Tazrakh said. “Hasn’t been much bragging about that. Half the kids were so young they were still furry. Danny started kicking up a stink and the boss pointed a gun at him. Had to talk him down before he wound up in the pit too.”

 _They don’t trust me so much after I got angry…_ That wasn’t what Janae had been picturing.

Cora brought her a couple of batteries. She concentrated hard on the rewiring.

 

............................

 

Someone noticed the little drone clinging to their comms tower and smashed it. Janae still had wireless access to the assault team via Rising Tide comms, but they no longer had any way to tell what was going on outside the shed. There was less banging and screaming. That was probably a bad sign.

Cora kept running her biotics through the shed’s metal walls, checking for new structural weaknesses. She hadn’t found any yet.

Tazrakh kept quietly making bombs. Her face was bleeding again. Little drops of dark red blood, seeping through the medigel coating on her torn-up jowl, running down the smooth grey skin of her neck and disappearing into her soggy fur.

With her chest fur plastered flat with water and dried blood, with the way the lights cast shadows from above, Janae could tell she almost had breasts. Six little peaks in the smooth layer of fat.

 _Batarians are mammalian,_ a long-ago biology teacher had said, _but their mammary glands are only obvious when actively lactating, and regress afterwards to…_ to approximately that.

Not Janae’s question to ask. Much better not to know.

No breaches in the walls. Keep making bombs.

_I lay this before every god: I wish to live._

_I lay this before every god: if I cannot live, I wish to die fighting._

 

_.............................._

 

Janae’s helmet comms crackled to life.

“Ygara Menoris here! Shuttle incoming! Stand by for extraction!”

“Standing by!” Janae called back. “Tide are still trying to get in!”

There was a chorus of panicked yelling from outside, a rattle of shots, the deep _vwoop_ of heavy-duty laser weapons, and the whine of a landing shuttle.

Loud crackle and a series of thuds and screams.

“Open the door!” Ygara yelled. “I’m shielding it!”

Tazrakh typed in a code with one hand, clutching Serra’s shotgun in the other. Cora spread a shield over the inside of the door as it creaked open.

Ygara Menoris was holding up a crackling blue shield with one hand, pistol ready in the other.

Most of the Tide seemed to have run, although one of the batarians was still stuck in their overloaded armour. There was a charred heap that had probably been a few pirates before the shuttle laser hit them. A couple of quarians were lying in a stunned pile where Ygara must have flung them.

Cora dropped the door shield and spread her field over Janae. Gravity wobbled and disappeared and suddenly Janae was floating – quite comfortable, although the fields going right through her felt uncomfortably intimate.

The shuttle was only twenty metres away, its door open and guarded. Ygara held the bubble over them as they walked. No one attacked.

Into the shuttle. Cora lowered Janae onto the emergency bed as the door slammed shut, and they were away.

Tazrakh half-collapsed into the nearest chair and shut her eyes.

 _“Right.”_ That was Kalia the medic, standing over Janae. “Vital signs aren’t terrible, but you’ve definitely lost a lot of blood. Hold still while I get this in,” and she stabbed Janae in the forearm with an intravenous needle the size of a sewer pipe.

“Tazrakh,” Janae pointed out.

“You first. Tazrakh second. Hold still.”

Cora was standing behind Kalia and she was definitely crying.

“Oh, come on,” Janae said. “You rescued most of me. All the essential bits. That’s quite adequate.”

That got a half-smile.

“Seriously,” Janae pointed out. “Situation’s downgraded from “oh no we’re probably going to die” from “oh no I’m going to need lots of surgery and maybe a few cyborg bits.” That’s impressive. And can I mention the yowler incident again?”

Kalia frowned at her. “We are _not_ amputating your leg.”

“We aren’t? Ah, good.”

That actually was a major relief, now she thought about it. However good, modern cybernetics were, it was _her_ leg. It had sentimental value.

Her brain definitely wasn’t working right. She still felt like she was floating. She was probably going to break down and start screaming any moment. Oh well. At this stage, it wouldn’t inconvenience anyone much.

 

...................

 

Medbay on the _Sunshark._ Kalia wiring Janae up to, wow, that’s a lot of machines. And a bag of emergency replacement blood, the white multi-species-appropriate stuff straight out of the blood replicator.

Laurette Kuromatsu was sitting up in the next bed, staring. She looked a lot better – brown instead of yellow-grey.

Tazrakh was in a slightly-too-small chair, hooked up to more machines and a large bag of antibiotics. She smelled awful, old blood and dried urine, but she had enough energy left to sit up straight.

“See, Rett?” Tazrakh said. “Told you we’d all make it out. We get our political asylum, we find jobs in security, and we go from there.”

Laurette slid out of bed.

She’d had the shape of her skull tattooed on her face, by someone who wasn’t sure what a human skull looked like. It failed to make her look badass.

“I’m,” she was staring at what was left of Tazrakh’s eye, “I’m so sorry!”

Tazrakh shrugged. “I’ve lived through a lot worse. Your government pays for my new eye, right, Doctor?”

“Yep,” Kalia said over her shoulder. “They won’t pay for a cosmetically pretty one, but they’ll pay for one that works.”

“Hmm,” Tazrakh said. “Wouldn’t say no to the most fake-looking eye possible. Make a political point.”

Rett squeezed both her shoulders, hard.

“And that is _not_ the best way to get yourself off opium,” Tazrakh added. “Do it properly, not fast. That way you might stay off, and the doctor doesn’t have to use a mop.”

“She already told me that,” Laurette muttered. “Look, I just wanted to stop being a fuckup…”

“Step at a time, right?” Kalia called over her shoulder. She turned back to Janae. “Theatre’s clean now, so I’ll take you in and sort out your leg…”

 

..........................

 

Janae woke up in medbay.

Head hurt. Leg hurt. Hurt more when she tried to move it, but yes, it was definitely still attached. Everything hurt, actually.

Cora was sitting beside her, monitoring her vitals. Tazrakh was missing, probably being patched up under anaesthetic.

Cora was scrubbed clean, and wearing a sleeveless shirt, and holy _fuck_ what had happened to her arms? She’d gone brown and purple in patches! Like some sort of rotting fruit, that might dissolve into slime any minute… she didn’t look like she was disintegrating?

Oh wait. Apparently that’s what bruises look like on near-translucent skin.

Still looked awfully painful.

Cora wasn’t actually fragile, apart from the sunlight thing and her skin tearing a little easily. Looked worryingly breakable sometimes, though. _Looked_ like someone who needed to be wrapped in blankets more often.

Eh – at least she hadn’t been shot.

She met Janae’s eyes. _Never noticed how pretty her eyes were. They’re almost gold, and they’ve got that little black fringe like built-in eyeliner…_

Cora smiled. “Good news. You’ve still got two legs.” Her voice cracked slightly. “One of them now has two major arteries rather than three, but apparently two’s all you need. Kalia says you’ll be back to normal function in a month or two.”

“Oh. Good. Can I get someone to wait on me hand and foot till then?” Her voice came out raspy but intact.

Cora handed her a pouch of energy drink with a straw. Best thing she’d tasted in years.

Cora rolled her eyes. “Not me. I don’t owe you that kind of debt!”

“Nah. You already rescued me from a giant monster made of teeth. Best hamster ball of all time!”

Mmm, energy drink.

Cora snorted. “For a mission where we were shot down in enemy territory? I think it went pretty well, overall.” She took Janae’s hand and clung onto it.

Something occurred to Janae. “Cora. _What happened to the medkit of angry pink bugs?”_

“Put it in the incinerator without opening it. Bit disappointed we didn’t get to use it, but hey, grenades work better.” She grinned. “No, they’re not rampaging around the _Sunshark_. Don’t worry.”

“Ah. That’s a relief. Nobody needs very small pink rachni.”          

Cora rolled her eyes again. “Janae. The only possible response to that is “better than full-size rachni.””

“But little ones can hide under things! And ambush your toes!”

The monitor started beeping and Cora let go of her hand to poke it.

“The problem with artificial blood being white,” Cora said, leaning over her, “is that now your lips are a really worrying shade of blue-grey.”

Ooh, and she could see right down her shirt from this angle. Janae suddenly realised she was naked under the sheets.

“Hey Cora. Kiss me.”

Cora blinked. “What?”

“Gently, obviously, but my face isn’t broken.” She puckered her lips and made a few kissing noises.

Cora’s eyes widened. “What? Romantically?”

Ah. Bad move. “Er, that was the intention, but if you don’t want to, um, sorry, I may have picked up the wrong impression somewhere. Oops.” Oh no.

Did you know humans turn bright red when embarrassed?

“Sorry,” Cora said. “Very flattered, very very flattered, but um. Not my type. You’re awesome, just not my type.”

“Ah. That’s fair. Wrong species?” Bit sad, but it happens.

“Wrong, ah, gender.”

“What?” What did that even mean?

Cora went darker red. “Look, I know you’re not actually a woman, but you look a lot like a woman, and I’m only into men, honestly, I tried making out with a girl once and it was just weird, and I know you’re not really a woman but that’s not what my brain’s telling me…”

What? OK, yes, asari all look like human _females,_ sure, and maybe we count as women by human standards? I’m used to being a woman by turian standards, unless they get hung up on the head shape? But… you are human, so logically shouldn’t you be attracted to human women?

Is this some weird thing like that turian I met once who only dated salarians?

What?

Let’s just go with “not my type” and leave the xenobiology for later.

The vitals monitor made a horrible noise. Cora stared at it, stared at her, checked her pulse, and poked the monitor till it shut up.

“You are _not_ dying,” she declared. “Your heart rate and blood pressure just went through the roof due to. Um. If your blood pressure starts _falling,_ I’ll be worried.”

“Oh. Good. I refuse to die of embarrassment. That’d just be embarrassing.”

“Let me check the wound again.” Cora pulled back the sheets, ran a med-scanner over her thigh, and politely ignored the way her bits had gone into action mode and she couldn’t seem to get them out of action mode, not even by imagining Councillor Valern naked. Valern had a young daughter, right, so picture him politely fertilising that egg…

Anyway. No haemorrhage.

Cora sat down. “Sorry. I really am flattered, if that helps.”

“I may have… picked up on some signals that weren’t actually there. Oops.” Call it a learning experience.

Cora sighed. “Not the first time. It’s just… you expect issues like this with men, right? Not used to it with women. Or, er, people who look like women.”

Janae had always assumed human gender was like turian gender, just with less glitter on the men and more on the women, but… come to think of it, how does turian gender work? It’s not just about who has a uterus and who gets the glitter. It’s important. They really care about it.

Cirine had a human girlfriend, right? She’d have to ask Cirine what was going on.

“Oh well,” Janae said. “We’ve clarified a few things and I look like an idiot. Sometimes I look like an idiot. Maybe it’ll stop happening by the time I turn four hundred? Anyway, you know what? You’re _platonically_ awesome.”

Cora shook her head. “Let’s go with that. You’re platonically awesome too. We definitely should go for coffee sometime. Platonically.”

“There’s a place selling Authentic Earth Coffee and Lattes right next to the barracks in… hmm. It’s probably not very authentic. Actually it’s probably appropriating your culture somehow. But the arau and the lissik are decent quality and very high-caffeine.”

Cora nodded. “Not a big fan of lissik. And I wish cafes would just boil it, rather than the look-at-me-I’m-fancy thing where they sprinkle it on a blob of whipped cream and give you a tiny spoon. But the coffee has to be better than I’m used to.”

She took Janae’s hand again and squeezed.


End file.
